Jonathan, The point is, the information in the variable *is* coordinate information, and there *is* a domain/range relationship between the coordinate information and one or more measurements, even when the content of the "auxiliary coordinate variable" does not (for more than one possible reason) meet the rather strict requirements for being designated as a coordinate variable (1-D, monotonic, etc). I want to capture that relationship in a clear fashion within my files.
What if we say something along the lines of, "Applications should treat the data as missing where the auxiliary coordinates are missing when plotting data."? Would that resolve the problem? Grace and peace, Jim On Thu, Mar 29, 2012 at 11:04 AM, Jonathan Gregory < [email protected]> wrote: > Dear all > > If we say, "applications are free to assume that data is missing where the > auxiliary coordinates are missing" (John Caron's words), it means that > applications can also choose to do something else, such as trying to guess > what the location is and plotting it or doing some calculation with that > guess. As far as the data-provider is concerned, that behaviour is > unpredictable (John Graybeal's word), since different analysis software > will > do different things. Some of them may be appropriate, some of them might > not > be. This doesn't sound good to me, and it's why I tend to think that > missing > values in aux coords should not be allowed where there is non-missing data. > > To repeat, that is not an argument against storing the information in the > file, just for not for labelling it as an aux coord variable. In a second > step, > the data-provider might reprocess the file and fill in the missing values. > Then > it can safely be an aux coord var. It is now reliable, since the values > have > been estimated by an appropriate method by the original data provider. > > Best wishes > > Jonathan > _______________________________________________ > CF-metadata mailing list > [email protected] > http://mailman.cgd.ucar.edu/mailman/listinfo/cf-metadata > -- Jim Biard Research Scholar Cooperative Institute for Climate and Satellites Remote Sensing and Applications Division National Climatic Data Center 151 Patton Ave, Asheville, NC 28801-5001 [email protected] 828-271-4900
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